Ian Thorpe wins gold medal in 400m freestyle – Zurich International Meet

Ian Thorpe wins gold medal in 400m freestyle – Zurich International Meet

The five-time Olympic champion and Australian comeback king, Ian Thorpe has finally captured his first comeback title on his Olympic trail.

The 29-year-old Thorpe, who made a comeback to competitive swimming in February 2011, is trying hard to achieve his Olympic qualification dream. Thorpe, who entered his first Federation Internationale de Natation Amateur (FINA) recognised event last November,
has been constantly improving his time.

The Australian has participated at the last three stops of FINA World Cup but failed to grab any medal.

Thorpe won five gold medals in the freestyle disciplines at the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Olympic Games. With his epic performance, the Australian finished fourth in the 100m freestyle event at the 2012 Zurich International Meet, where he clocked a time
of 52.28 seconds. His timing was two seconds slower from Andrey Grechin, who accomplished gold medal with a timing of 50.06 seconds. The second spot was secured by Flori Lang, who ended his swim with a 51.02 seconds effort.

Furthermore, he remained just 0.28 seconds slower from overwhelming the efforts of third position holder, Alexandre Liess, who posted 52.00 seconds.

Subsequently, Thorpe returned to the pool deck for 400m freestyle and this time he made no mistake and spoiled the party of his competitors. The comeback king was the only swimmer to post a sub 4 minutes effort.

With his epic stroke, Thorpe dominated his way throughout the swim and earned gold medal by clocking a time of 3 minutes and 59.48 seconds. His title claiming form placed him in a lead of 0.96 seconds over his following swimmer, Jovan Mitrovic, who clinched
silver medal of the event.

Nevertheless, the 29-year-old Thorpe has almost two weeks left to prepare as the Australian Selection Trials for the 2012 London Olympic Games, which are starting from March 15 in Adelaide.

If qualified, the legendary Australian will exceed the expectations of many however, he claimed that he would not quit swimming, if he fails to book his spot in the Australian team to London and will keep swimming until the next Olympic Games.

In addition, it would be interesting to see how Thorpe performs at the next month’s trials.

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Posted by Mursil Mehmood Butt on Feb 26 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry